Sammy Rendel sluggishly got out of his decrepit bed. He ate his small loaf of bread that tasted like a stone brick. The sun barely came up when he left for work, his eyes looking at the ground. 

The distant sounds of children moaning and crying echoed in his ears as he walked down the dark streets. To the sides, families through the windows were huddled together, scrambling for the last bit of food that they have been given. The big gate looming over it all. From the outside of the factory he hears the sounds of the working, machinery, and destroyed bodies of the people working as he walks into the factory

He went into the factory and got to his station. The rusted, beat-up materials lay beside him as he began. As he constructed a stabilizer, the wrench dropped onto the floor, sounding like a pin dropping in all the noise. The work was paused so he could pick it up. A Nazi guard overseeing the factory approached him after seeing he wasn't working. “Why aren’t you working”, yelled the guard.

 “I dropped and lost my wrench”, whimpered Sammy. His body trembled at the sight of the guard.

“I don’t care”, growled the guard, “Schnell”.

Sammy continued to work on the planes, his body laboring harder as the day flew by. His throat was stiff and dry and pained him all day. His stomach growled every minute and he heard constant orders to work harder. It tore him apart from the inside.

Later in the day, he turned around and heard a man and guard yelling back at each other through the noise. 

“I did not try to destroy the plane parts”, said the man 

“That is what I saw you did”, said the guard. He saw the other people turn to face the situation. 

“I did not,” the man said.

Eventually, he saw the guard forcibly remove him.

. 

Sammy remembered his mother and sisters being taken away just like the man.

From this, he remembered that he was the lucky one. He didn’t die in the chambers. he didn’t develop any sort of disease and died from that. He and his father were strong, and being strong and doing that work kept them alive physically. But even with being alive physically, he was barely alive mentally. The work drained him as he heard the loud machinery and the rusted materials as he worked to create these parts.

Eventually, the guards yelled at the workers that the day was over. He walked back onto Krakow's dark, hopeless street. The sky was dark and he saw the same thing as the morning. Families huddled together inside the buildings, thin with their faces looking like they were already dead. But this time, he looked out and saw children playing. They were laughing and running and having fun. Even though they were in a ghetto, starving and dying, they hadn’t given up hope yet. He turned the other way and heard praying from the other direction. He sees a family together, praying. The family also hadn’t given up hope.

 Sammy thought, “If these kids and this family are still doing what they normally do, why shouldn’t I”.

 “Why should I lose all my hope when others haven't"?

 “This can't go on forever”.

 He walked back to his home to see the empty streets and heard crickets in the dark, night sky.

The big gate was still that barrier to freedom, but Sammy thought, “One day that barrier will be broken”.